1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
263 
bloom, the line, broad foliage, which is green all 
the year, commends them. 
Moving a Large Arbor-Vitu*:. —A fine 
Arbor-Vitse, twenty feet high and furnished to 
the ground, stood too near the house; and after 
much hesitation we concluded to move it. The 
earth was dug away so as to leave a good ball 
with the roots, and then it was to be transport¬ 
ed to its new place upon a stone-boat. Every¬ 
thing was made ready, and some extra force 
called in; but the tree set all our calculations at 
nauglit. The sandy soil would not stay with 
the roots at all, but left them almost as clean as 
if they had been washed. The roots were kept 
wet until they were covered in replanting, and 
now the new growth is starting and the removal 
is thus far a success. August, however, will de¬ 
cide the matter. 
Poison Ivy is a great nuisance. One of us 
has been sorely poisoned by it. It is not only 
dangerous, but a miserable weed which is most 
difficult to eradicate. Probably only a small 
minority of people are susceptible to its poison¬ 
ous influence, but it affects a sufficient number 
to make it a serious nuisance, and one which 
should he suppressed. In many places it covers 
almost every fenceposf. If it is proper to make 
laws restraining a man from raising Canada 
thistles to infest his neighbor’s land, there ought 
to be one to prevent him from poisoning 
his neighbors as they pass along the highway. 
Honeysuckles. —Dr. K. has the ‘pillars of 
his veranda very neatly covered with honey¬ 
suckles; four vines run up at each pillar and are 
equally covered with foliage from the bottom to 
the top. We generally see naked stems below 
and a mass of branches above. The Doctor 
sets out a plant and allows four shoots to start 
from the root; these are each trained to a per¬ 
pendicular wire. When the shoots are a few 
feet high the point is pinched ; this causes a 
branch to start at each leaf; the uppermost 
branch will continue up the wire for a leader 
and after a while it is pinched again. The side 
shoots are also pinched if they grow too strong. 
The result is a stem with short branches along 
its sides, which makes a very neat appearance. 
Can I Succeed as a Market Gardener ? 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
“D. H.,” writes me thus: “I am a book¬ 
keeper with a salary from which I can save but 
little; but by rigid economy during a series of 
years, I have scraped together $2,000. My 
health is only ordinary. With that capital can 
I succed as a Market Gardener by hiring an ex¬ 
perienced gardener ?”-This inquiry is a type 
of hundreds I now receive annually, and to 
which may be given this general reply. From 
the nature of the question no very definite 
answer can be given, though I would say that 
the chances are two to one against success. It 
is a well-known fact that the chances of success 
iu mercantile business are even far less than 
this. “D. H.” maybe a capital book-keeper, 
yet it is doutful if he has the necessary endur¬ 
ance to stand the wear on the constitution that 
market gardening involves. If he concludes to 
start at gardening, he is more likely than not to 
select a soil entirely unsuited to the purpose. In 
most sections of the country there are fewer soils 
suitable for the cultivation of vegetables than 
there are those that are unsuitable. Again, lie 
is an educated man, and this very fact would be 
rather against him than otherwise; as it would 
naturally incline him to refined society and asso¬ 
ciations, which I am sorry to say the beginner 
in market gardening cannot possibly afford to 
indulge in. The hiring of an “ experienced 
gardener” would take all the cream off of the 
profits; experienced market gardeners are ex¬ 
ceedingly scarce; our laborers iu the market 
gardens are generally an ignorant class, with 
very little ambition, and not one in a hundred 
of them is fit to manage. Though employing 
thirty hands myself, I have often been sadly at 
a loss to select from them a suitable man as 
foreman, though many of them had been with 
me for years. When one shows the necessary 
ability, his services are much sought after, and 
he readily commands $>.500 or $G00 a year and 
board. Clerks, book-keepers, nor city-bred men 
generally, are not the ones likely to be success¬ 
ful as workers of the soil; few of them have 
any conception of the labor required to be done 
to ensure success. I started business in Jersey 
City at the age of 23, with a capital of $500, 
which it had taken me three years to make as a 
working gardener. For the first five yeajrs I 
was in business, I can safely say that we wprked, 
on an average, sixteen hours a day, winter and 
summer, with rarely a day for recreation. Now 
the majority of clerks, book-keepers, or sales¬ 
men do not work much more than half that 
time, and few of them could endure this length¬ 
ened strain in a summer’s sun,—and ivithout 
this endurance success is out of the question; 
for all beginners to-day must do as we did until 
they get their heads above water,—or else such 
is the competition, they must go to the wall in 
the business ; we therefore caution “ D. II.,” and 
all such who are not in robust health to avoid 
either farming or gardening, if their necessities 
require them to make a living thereby. That the 
work of the farmer or gardener is conducive to 
health when health has not been impaired, there 
is no question; but the long hours of labor and 
the exposure necessary to success must tell 
against a feeble constitution. 
---*-®b.- 
Perfected Crown Grafting. 
Having occasion to graft over a pear-tree 
while it was in full leaf, we tried, for most of the 
limbs, what the French call the Perfected Crown 
Graft. The cion is shaped as shown in figure 1. 
The stock is prepared by cutting it off as for 
cleft grafting, but if only one cion is to be in¬ 
serted, it is cut sloping as in figure 2. Instead 
of making a cleft in the wood, a longitudinal cut 
is made through the bark only. A thin line of 
bark is cut a- 
tvay from the 
left-hand edge 
of the wedge- 
shaped portion 
of the cion, as 
at/, fig. 1 . The 
left-hand por¬ 
tion of the bark 
of the stock, (C, 
fig. 2), is slight¬ 
ly lifted and 
the cion thrust 
down between 
perfected grafting. it and the wood, 
the edge, /, of the cion coming in contact with 
that portion (D, fig. 2), of the bark of the stock 
that is not disturbed. Figure 3 shows the cion 
in place. Two cions may be placed in a large 
limb, in which case it is cut off square, and the 
notch on the cion is square instead of slanting. 
The 'wounds are covered with grafting wax iu 
the usual manner. The success thus far is very 
satisfactory; but it remains to be seen if the union 
will be strong enough when the grafts have 
grown larger. The operation is much easier to 
perform than to describe, and is quite rapidly 
done. After the stock has started to grow, 
this method is much safer than cleft grafting, 
which at that season is troublesome to do. 
- - - e-»—-*-*——- 
Peach Crates. 
Planters will now be making ready for the 
transportation of their crop to market, and we 
give the following timely directions for making 
a crate from Mr. Fulton’s very thorough work 
on Peach Culture: “ The standard dimensions 
of a crate are eight inches wide, fourteen deep, 
and twenty-three and a half long, outside meas¬ 
ure. They are made of pine or other light wood. 
The ends and partition are sawed three-quarters 
of an inch thick, seven and a half wide, and four¬ 
teen long. The bottom and top twenty-three 
and a half long, six and a half wide, and three- 
eighths of an inch thick. The sides are com¬ 
posed of four slats, twenty-three and a half inch¬ 
es long, two and a half inches wide, and also 
three-eighths of an inch thick. Sometimes light¬ 
er stuff is used. The ends and partition are 
thicker, because to these all the other pieces are 
nailed. The whole crate consists of thirteen 
pieces. It is very simple in construction, and 
any intelligent hand, with a proper frame, can 
put it up without difficulty. The stuff is some¬ 
times planed on the outside, which gives it a 
much neater appearance. Crate's cost from 
thirteen to 
twenty dol¬ 
lars per 100. 
—They go 
with the 
p cache s, 
and are nev¬ 
er returned; CRATE, 
hence, those who ship in crates must provide as 
many crates as they have fruit to fill them. The 
reasons they are not returned, are two. First: 
they cannot be packed in each other like bas¬ 
kets, but occupy precisely as much room as 
when full. They are much more troublesome to 
handle, and the transporters will not return 
them free of charge as they do baskets. Second¬ 
ly : they are usually reshipped or sent at once to 
a distant market, and sold with the peaches.” 
Worms on Currant Busiies. —We have 
often recommended the use of powdered white 
hellebore to destroy the caterpillars which feed 
upon the leaves of currant bushes. This is very 
efficacious,though it is somewhat inconvenient to 
use on account of the violent sneezing produced 
if any of the powder finds its way into tlie nos¬ 
trils. Mr. II. G. White, of Buffalo, N. Y., finds 
a mixture of tar and soap to destroy the cater¬ 
pillars. “Take of common pine tar a pint and 
twice the quantity of common soft soap; stir 
well together and pour sufficient hot water up¬ 
on it to dissolve, and mix it; this will make 
about two pailfuls of the tar water. With a 
fine sprinkler, or with a syringe, wet the bushes 
thoroughly. This same mixture is better for 
rose bushes than soap alone, or whale-oil soap, as 
I have tried both.” Mr. W. states that some of 
his neighbors find that coal ashes, put upon 
the soil around the currant bushes, keep them 
free from the caterpillars. This may be owing to 
the fact that a layer of ashes makes a barrier 
through which the parent insect cannot penetrate 
when it leaves its winter quarters iu the ground. 
